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Phacus rotunda in Finland

You might like to call all the large Phacus with a long tail just longicauda. But no. There is more to it. Ever since Ehrenberg described the species in 1831 there has been a wide variety of names for different taxa in this group. A group of Polish researchers recently wrote a nice paper about the Phacus longicauda complex. They described 8 different species, that all have a long tail.

There is a nest of Euglenid-experts in Poland. We had the great pleasure to have one of the best ones to be our guest at the annual meeting of the Finnish Phytoplankton Association last spring in Jyväskylä - prof. Bozena Zakrys. Now her student is the first author of this interesting article, where the longicauda comlpex is fixed up. They describe 8 different Phacus species with a long tail. The old buddies, Phacus longicauda (Ehrenberg) Dujardin 1841 of course, but also circumflexus Pochmann 1942, helikoides Pochmann 1942 and tortus (Lemmerman) Skvortzov 1917 get all an amended diagnosis.

They further rise Phacus rotunda (Pochmann) and Phacus cordata (Pochmann) to the species level, both Zakrys et M. Łukomska as authors. The Polish also described two totally new species: Phacus cristatus Zakrys et M. Łukomska and Phacus crassus Zakrys et M. Łukomska.

Only Ph. longicauda and Ph. tortus were on the official Finnish phytoplankton list, now they are accompanied by Ph. rotunda, which was kindly identified from a photo by prof. Zakrys.

Take a look at he nice picture in the article.


Literature:
Łukomska-Kowalczyk, Maja, Anna Karnkowska, Rafał Milanowski, Łukasz Łach, and Bozena Zakrys (2015). Delimiting species in the Phacus longicauda complex (Euglenida) through morphological and molecular analyses. J. Phycol. 51, 1147–1157.

Blue-green algae test

The Technical Research Centre of Finland LTD (VTT) and the University of Turku, Finland are developing a simple, do-it-yourself test for detecting the presence of toxic blue-green algae in water:

http://www.utu.fi/en/news/articles/Pages/Novel-Testing-Device-for-Blue-green-Algae.aspx

At the moment it looks like this:

Picture: Pirjo Hakkarainen VTT

Now this should be taken to th next level - make it commercial. Interested? Contact VTT.

3D data from FEI

Hmm... I wonder if this can be used to 3dimensionate algae?



http://www.fei.com/products/sem/teneo-vs-sem-for-life-sciences/?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonv6vKZKXonjHpfsX57essXaGg38431UFwdcjKPmjr1YIET8J0aPyQAgobGp5I5FENTrjYTK1jt6QMUw%3D%3D

It would make approaching the wonderful world of alge so much easier to all the people who now have to live - on a daily basis - without this precious flavouring their lives. Not to mention the benefit of being able to identify our little friends with less effort.

Take a look at the video.

The importance of microscopical analyse of algae

What a pleasure to read the article "Resolving variability of phytoplankton species composition and blooms in coastal ecosystems" of Riina Klais, James E. Cloern and Paul J. Harrison in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science, where they point out the importance of microscopical analysis of phytoplankton in the following way: "Despite of the preliminary difficulties in using the existing phytoplankton time series data for cross system comparisons, most studies that have been global to date have used either model outputs or satellite observations, and even the latter do not come close to the level of information that the microscopic analysis of a phytoplankton sample by experienced taxonomist can provide."

After one has heard some voices saying that phytoplankton analysis could be replaced with other analysis. Well that just is not true. You lose a magnitude of information if you don't know what the species are that make the basis of all production in water - the phytoplankton community.

There are still many obstacles to overcome before we can enjoy the benefits of a global, access-to-all database, but in the mean time I'll do my best in following the changes in taxonomy and documenting my methods in an adequate way, willingly serving the greater good.



https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281064021_Resolving_variability_of_phytoplankton_species_composition_and_blooms_in_coastal_ecosystems

Bullseye

Or two actually. That is what I see here - a young bull running around on the green, green grass of his first spring, looking curiously around for the wonders of the world:

But then again, not many people have told me I lack imagination.
Others just call this algae Mesostigma viride. Me too, when counting.

The young bull expression comes from the two pyrenoids on each side of the cell and the ”lightly saddle-like bent” body, as Skuja (1948) describes the form of the cell.

The flatness of the cell supports the impression of the saddle:

What also catches the eye is the square-like-structure on the cell:

For the squares a high N.A. for the objective and condensor is recommended. It is quite small, the whole cell is only about 10 µm "big".

The flagella, on the other hand, are more seldom seen in fixed samples. They emerge from the ventral side of the cell, not apical or from the side, as in most other algae.

Also the stigma is not so clearly seen in lugol samples. The stigma should be a big one and in the middle of the cell - that's why Lauterborn gave it the name Mesostigma.

Mesostigma has earlier been regarded as a member of Prasinophyta, so being in the oldest group of green algae, going back perhaps all the way to PreCambrian (Moestrup 2002). This algae has been a subject to intensive taxonomical studies and a has finally gotten a whole Class of it's own: Mesostigmatophyceae in Streptophyta, (Marin & Melkonian 1999, Leliaert et al 2012). So not in Chlorophyta. AlgaeBASE still uses terms as Prasinophyte and Charophyta, strange.

I have seen these algae in a couple of samples in Finnish waters. Once you get the picture of it in your brain, it's very easy to identify. Although this time the drawings in the books are not very helpful. Even Skuja's drawing is this time not quite accurate:

Skuja, H. (1948).

Try to find it, it is there, waiting for you in many kinds of fresh waters.


Literature:

Lauterborn, R. (1894). Ueber die Winterfauna einiger Gewässer der Oberrheinebene. Mit Beschreibungen neuer Protozoen. Biologische Centralblatt 14: 390-398.
http://www.algaebase.org/pdf/562DFCAF13e03286E3uGv3A26EC8/48540.pdf

Marin, B. & Melkonian, M. (1999). Mesostigmatophyceae, a new class of streptophyte green algae revealed by SSU rRNA sequence comparisons. Protist 150: 399-417, 9 figs, 2 tables.

Skuja, H. (1948). Taxonomie des Phytoplanktons einiger Seen in Uppland, Schweden. Symbolae Botanicae Upsalienses 9 (3). A. -B. Lundequistska Bokhandeln, Uppsala, 399 pp., XXXIX pls.

Leliaert F., Smith D.R., Moreau H., Herron M.D., Verbruggen H., Delwiche C.F. & De Clerck O. Phylogeny and molecular evolution of the green algae. (2012) Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences 31: 1-46.

Foldscope

Foldscope is coming!
Soon the microscopic world is within reach to everybody. And not only for fun, but for the benefit of all mankind. I'm happy to be involved in this project.

Like they say:
"Finally, we are as excited about scaling up this project as you are about using and sharing the microscopic world with everyone. We hope to build a community that grows with time, is passionate about teaching each other the mysteries of the microscopic world and finally has empathy towards the divide that exists in access to scientific tools and wants to contribute positively towards eliminating the same."

Take a look at this great project: http://www.foldscope.com/

Read more:
Foldscope: Origami based paper microscope
J. Cybulski, J. Clements and M. Prakash
PLoS ONE 9(6):e98781. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0098781,June 2014